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EIA Washington recently published data revisions to global oil
production, going back at least twenty years. Here, I update annual
average oil production for Non-OPEC, which used to account for
60% of total global supply but has had trouble sustaining
increases–even in a high-priced oil environment.

As of 2011, Non-OPEC supply fell to 57% of total global share,
the difference being made up of course by OPEC.

Readers will be aware of the recent meme, that oil power is
shifting back to the West. There is of course no data support
whatsoever for such a narrative but the attractiveness of such a
story is of course obvious.

After all, it was supposedly the superior technical advantage of
the West that would help it significantly boost oil production
should the price ever rise. That was the view strongly held back
in 2002-2004. The result? Non-OPEC oil production actually went
into decline, as price rose.

And it was only Russia–Non-OPEC’s largest single producer–that
was able to lift supply. More recently, the uptick in Non-OPEC
supply was largely funded by the brief fall in demand created by
the 2008-2009 economic crash. This stranded some capacity, and
allowed for some development already in process to come on
stream. The result is that the hope offered by 2010′s production
level of 42.453 mbpd, as it slightly bested the previous
production high of 2004, was not built upon in 2011.

What the media and even many industry professionals still find
hard to accept, is the following outcome: higher prices, even in
the free-market West, are not bringing on net new supply that
would actually produce a string of sustained increases.

The reason is not overly complicated: while the West has a suite
of BTU resources upon which it can draw, from Natural Gas
Liquids, to Coal, to dry Natural Gas, it has run into a limit
with oil. Indeed,
the entire world has run into a limit with crude oil. The result
is that small upticks in production from the United States,
Canada, or Brazil, are not enough to move the large number: total
global supply. Accordingly, these small oscillations in supply
are taking place below a 5-7 year ceiling, and do nothing to
lower the price of oil, or the price of gasoline. Does anyone
care to forecast that Non-OPEC production will increase, from
here, for a number of years and by enough to bring the price of
oil down? Go ahead, be my guest.